


Somewhere in the Summer

by pickyourpanta



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: ALL ABOARD THE ANGST TRAIN, Angst, Choo choo to misery and sadness, Here have an OumaSai AU where everyone is still dead because I'm an asshole, I will not be stopped, It's just more angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-24 09:47:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14352963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickyourpanta/pseuds/pickyourpanta
Summary: Pardon me...But have we met before?[A small ficlet for my angsty sons who I wish could have just married and lived happily ever after but DanganRonpa just had to crush my dreams-]





	1. one

Twelve unread texts. Five missed calls.

Maki was going to throw a _fit_.

But Shuuichi Saihara didn't care. The falsified detective ignored the angry, buzzing phone in his hand, opting instead to peer out at the rolling countryside that crested up and down with the passing of the train.

Up, down, up, down, rhythmic, rolling waves of green and yellow, illuminated by sparkling drops and drips of summer suns, endless rays that shone upon finite days.

His phone buzzed again.

Thirteen unread texts, five missed calls.

He continued to ignore it.

Not long afterwards, the phone vibrated _again_ , so petulantly insistent and needy.

Thirteen unread messages, six missed calls.

Even so, he did not pick up. He let the phone ring and ring and ring until it petered away into a huffy silence.

Shuuichi was granted a small, brief moment of reprieve. He sighed with relief, and closed his eyes. _Finally_ -

Another small, angry vibration.

...Fourteen unread texts, six missed calls.

 _Christ_ , Maki.

He pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the train car window, lazily opening golden eyes half-way, his vision glazed and unfocused as the world drifted by far too fast for him to keep up, leaving Shuuichi Saihara behind to wade amidst the shambles of the monochromatic summers that characterized his youth, his foolish, imbecilic youth.

And that was how Shuuichi Saihara's summer began. A sweltering, accusing heat, festering in a cramped and rickety train compartment, wrapping in and around the fake detective, threatening to smother him.

It was unbearably hot and sticky; he felt gross, he felt weird, this felt _wrong_.

He pushed himself flat back against his seat, closed his eyes; he felt sick and tired, oh-so- _tired,_ and he just couldn't stay awake. To be awake, that meant dealing with this heat, with all the accusations, the guilt, and the phone that still buzzed away endlessly, clutched tight in his right hand, and Shuuichi Saihara just didn't want to _deal_ with all this anymore. 

On and on, that train rolled; as the young, erroneous detective slumbered in an uncomfortable haze of fitful dreams and memories that he'd much rather forget, that train carted him off and whisked him away, back, back, back to a place that Shuuichi Saihara was all too certain not even God knew.


	2. two

Yes, Shuuichi Saihara's sixteenth summer began so dismally dreary and gray within the cramped and crowded confines of a subway car.

Pressed in by all sides, sweltering in an uncomfortable shroud of body heat, Shuuichi always clung to the same railing above his head, standing in the same spot, and staring out the same window, trying to forget who he was, where he was, _what_ he was, just for a moment or two.

But he was cramped here; cramped and trapped, and so uncomfortably _hot_ , and the mass of bodies pressed in on him from all sides, and he suffocated from the reality of it all.

He was Shuuichi Saihara. He was stuck on this god-forsaken subway that glided along tracks that spanned this god-forsaken city that was situated on this god-forsaken world, being carted off to a god-forsaken place that didn't feel much like a home- never did and never would.

And, above all, he was a talentless, pitiable, miserable, wretched _human_.

He saw the same faces each and every day as he boarded the tram, rode the tram, exited the tram; human faces belonging to human beings almost as talentless, pitiable, miserable, and wretched as he was. Almost, but not quite, and these talentless, pitiable, miserable, wretched humans left him behind; here was Shuuichi Saihara, the lowest of the low, the worst of them all, and here he would stay as the rest of the world marched on.

Occasionally, though, he would spot a face with eyes that matched his tortured expression to a 'T,' or he'd see the curled and sneered lips that perfectly mirrored his own narcissistic cynicism, and it was these people that coerced him to tear his eyes from the windows, the walls, the railings, to observe them from the corners of his eyes with mild intrigue. Sometimes, they would all catch eyes, observe one another with cold, detached acknowledgement, before turning away to focus their attention elsewhere.

A talentless, pitiable, miserable, and wretched human like himself could pick out the ones who felt his own suffering, but somehow shaped differently into something they could each call their own. And he knew that those wretched souls, they could do the exact same to him, to others.

They knew each other's torment and suffering because it was _theirs_. They were kindred spirits, in a way, but so divided by their own inner hatred and anger and frustration, each partial to their own grief and frustrations.

There was a girl with blonde, clipped hair and pink eyes, whose sneer of disdain spoke more than her stony silence ever could. There was a boy with spiked up purple hair and a ridiculous goatee whose plastered smile never reached his eyes. There was a boy with hair as fresh and green as spring, but with eyes as bland and dead as winter.

And here was Shuuichi Saihara, hazel eyes dipped below a felt cap, who avoided looking people in the eyes because he was always so disgusted by what he saw there.

And there was more. Oh, there was _so_ much more.

There was a girl with wild blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a wicked tongue. There was a boy with long black hair, angular eyes, and a masked face who recoiled violently with a glare from any touch, brush, or scrape, no matter how innocuous or accidental. There was a girl with her long, brown hair in two, low twin tails, and a crimson glare that could have stared Death in the face, unwavering, until he blinked.

And here was Shuuichi Saihara with so little will or desire to live or to care, who stared at the ground so he didn't have to see how the world circled around and past him, leaving him behind, dizzy and disoriented.

 _Still_ , there was more. More and more of the _same damn thing_.

Every day, the same faces, the same shared, contemptuous observations, every day the same, the same, the same.

Same times. Same stops. Same people.

Same talentless, pitiable, miserable, wretched _human_ people.

And the same awareness of their own worthlessness. The same realizations and revelations of their own talentless, pitiable, miserable, wretched lives.

The same glances, the same silent acknowledgement.

Parallel existences, directly across from each other, equivalent in torment and suffering, close as could be, but never intersecting, never touching, never meeting.

There was a ridiculously small boy with round, cartoonish eyes and a heavy head. A red-head with a permanent scowl and downcast eyes and a whispering voice. A muscular mountain of a man with a cowardly disposition who flinched away from any and all eye contact.

And here was Shuuichi, dressed all in dark to mourn all that he had lost and all that he _would_ lose.

More. More. More _still_.

There was pale-haired girl who lost faith in God, and bore his symbol with cruel irony. An aggressive girl with braids with the temper of a maelstrom. A girl, rigid and motionless, who swept her emotions behind her hair, and never talked back.

And here was Shuuichi Saihara.

And here were those same wretched faces, with those same wretched fates, and their same wretched _humanness_.

But, but, it wasn't done yet.

No, there was still one more.

Just one more left.

But one was enough.

There was a boy, a boy with a rippling frizz of deep midnight hair, a boy with hunched shoulders and a shuffling gait. A boy with purple eyes darkened by fear and uncertainty, staring down at the ground for the very same reasons Shuuichi Saihara did- he didn't want to see the whole world spinning, spinning so very far away, leaving him so very far behind. A boy who bearing his heart, his soul on a single, baggy sleeve, who bowed his head under a heavy crown of melancholy.

And here was Shuuichi Saihara, whose sixteenth summer sky started out so dismally gray and cramped in the crowded tram; here was Shuuichi Saihara, and here was this boy dressed like the midsummer nights, who would paint Shuuichi's summer sky with midnight, and illuminate the stars.

Here was Shuuichi Saihara. And here was _summer_ ; and for the first time in his life, it was not gray or dreary or dull, but deep and dark, abyssal and amaranthine as the night sky.


	3. three

Fresh air _never_ tasted so sweet to the phony detective as he disembarked the train.

After _hours_ upon _hours_ of suffocating in an empty train compartment, staring out the window stained with fingerprints from past inhabitants, with nothing but the stifling silence and stiff, singed air for company, Shuuichi was all too glad to weave his way past other passengers to reach the platform. He actually had to physically restrain himself from pushing and shoving his way past other passengers, because that was just plain bad manners.

But _god_ , the fresh, open air, it felt so _good_. Shuuichi just had to take a break to soak it all in. He paused to take a deep inhalation, allowing the crisp summer air to balloon inside his lungs, breathing it out slowly, slowly, relishing in every moment. After the stuffy air inside the train, the cool, refreshing breeze was just so rejuvenating, he couldn't resist inhaling yet another deep, _deeeeep_ breath. His chest swelled to the point of discomfort, but he held his breath through the sting, merely wanting this experience to last for as long as he could-

"Move it, kid!"

Shuuichi Saihara stumbled and gasped as he was roughly shoved and brushed aside by a faceless individual (that was just plain bad manners, Sir or Ma'am or _whatever_.)

He felt his face flush with embarrassment as he hastened off to the side to avoid being swept along with the flood of the crowd, his ears burning. He had been so lost in his own little reverie, he had frozen smack-dab in the center of the station, a hindrance towards the disembarking and boarding passengers alike.

What a _nuisance_ you are, Mister Detective. You distract too easily, you know.

 _'But I like that about you, you know...Ah, sorry. That was a lie. I don't_ like _any_ one _thing about you._ '

(...If he listened closely, you know, he could still hear that sarcastic, accompanying laugh echoing on the summer breeze- All haughty and ' _Nishishi_.' He never comprehended just how much he might have missed that sound until he discovered that he had heard it for the last time in the summer past.)

**Author's Note:**

> a small ficlet for my son and his dead husband that no one wanted or needed k thanks bye


End file.
